Several of those rural schools with smaller stadiums played in Atlanta or elsewhere to increase their payout. Dodd said he'd have paid Ole Miss and Miss State more to play as visitors in Atlanta than they would have made themselves at their home stadiums. Legion Field in Birmingham was another popular site.
Tech played Bama in B'ham 3x as late as 1980, 81, and 83. Apart from that, we played both Alabama and Auburn in B'ham every other year through 1963 and 1968 respectively. We played Mississippi in 1946 and Miss State in 1908 and 1929, all three in Atlanta. For decades, Mississippi State played UT in Memphis, and Alabama in Birmingham.
Look at Miss State and UGAg. UGAg played MSU a grand total of once prior to 1950 and that was in Athens. Between 1950 and 1981, they played UGAg a total of 12x, 8x in GA (either Athens or Atlanta), 3x in Jackson, and only once in Starkville in 1951. NB: That 1981 date is after the vote for GA Tech to reenter the SEC. That 1951 game in Starkville was the only game UGAg ever played there until 1982. Even today Miss State and UGAg have played a total of only 25x. UGAg hasn't played MSU in Mississippi since 2010.
All that stuff about Ole Miss and Miss State not voting for Tech was rubbish. What was not rubbish was that, in 1978, we had played Ole Miss 3x (1 reg season and 2 bowl games). We won the first two games by a combined score of 48-14 and lost to them in a 1971 Peach Bowl 41-18. We had played Miss State 2x and won both games by a combined score of 50-13. We have played 3x since 2008 and won all three. Likewise, our series with Auburn stood with GT leading 38-33-3. Furthermore, at one point, GT won 16 of 19 games. Those teams didn't like us because they struggled to beat us. Though AU had begun to beat us in the 1970's, we had begun to win again by the time the vote happened.
